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Anniversary of the SS Patrick Henry by William Ironstone The job of being President of the United States in good Union via deliveries through Iran. 18 American shipyards times may be difficult enough for any one person to handle built 2,710 Libertys between 1941 and 1945, easily the but to be sitting in the hot seat as Franklin D. Roosevelt largest number of ships produced upon one design. did would make any person crumble. In the speech delivered at the launching, Roosevelt re- First there was the Great Depression that came when the ferred to Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty, or give me stock market failed. As he took over America’s began to Death!” speech of March 23, 1775. Roosevelt said that look brighter and filled with hope, day by day. That was this new class of ships would bring liberty to Europe, followed by the entry of the United States into World War which gave rise to the name “Liberty Ship”. II. Passing the “Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States” by Roosevelt was visionary in nature . It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, which is a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 and nine months before the U.S. en- tered the war in December 1941. It was an even more brilliant move to name the first Liberty Ship after Patrick Henry, who is considered one of our Founding Fathers and he is credited for the phase “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”. Henry also led the opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765. Patrick Henry Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, Henry is regarded as one of the most influential champions of Republicanism and an invested promoter of the American “Eastine Cowner, a former waitress, at work Revolution and its fight for independence. on the Liberty ship SS After the Revolution, Henry was a leader of the anti-fed- Carver at the Kaiser shipyards, Richmond, eralists in Virginia. His opposition to the Constitution be- California, in 1943. One of a series taken by cause he feared that it endangered the rights of the States E. F. Joseph on behalf of the Office of War as well as the freedoms of individuals, helped gain adop- Information documenting the work of Afri- tion of the Bill of Rights. can-Americans in the war effort.” The SS Patrick Henry was sponsored by Ilo Browne Wal- lace, wife of Vice President Henry A. Wallace, with Mrs. Robert H. Jackson, wife of the Associate Justice of

Based on research conducted on FDR, although he came from a privileged family and his cousin Theodore Roos- evelt was the President of the United States at the time, I am certain there were many sleepless nights tossing and turning over the situation in Europe with Hitler’s power on the rise as he was a man for the common men and women. It’s certain he felt helpless as there was nothing he could do because it is the United States Congress who issues the order to go to war, not the President. And at that time the sentiment of the country was they wanted to remain neu- tral. He did however come up with a plan in a way that if proposed to Congress, they would go along with it. And it did! FDR Signs Lend-Lease Act The Lend-Lease policy is formally titled “An Act to Fur- ther Promote the Defense of the United States.” It was the Supreme Court of the United States, and Madame a program under which the United States supplied Great Bruggmann, wife of the Minister of Switzerland Karl Britain, France, the Republic of China and later the USSR Bruggmann and sister of the vice president. Ilo Wallace and other Allied nations with material between 1941 and christened the ship. The ship’s fitting was completed on August 1945. The Act produced Liberty Ships!. December 30, 1941. Liberty Ships were cargo ships that were built in the Unit- The maiden voyage for the SS Patrick Henry was to the ed States during World War II. Although the ships were Middle East. During World War II she made 12 voyages to British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as ports including Murmansk, Trinidad, Cape Town, Naples, they were cheap and quick to build and came to symbolize and Dakar. U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered The SS Patrick Henry survived the war but was seriously by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by German U-Boats, damaged when she went aground on a reef off the coast they were purchased for the U.S. fleet and for lend-lease of Florida in July 1946. The ship was laid up at Mobile, deliveries of war material to Britain and to the Soviet Unemployed Americans Became Employed Alabama, and was scrapped at in 1958.